There has been a “dramatic and worrying collapse” in investment in clean energy in the UK in the past three years, MPs have warned.

The proportion of Britain’s electricity generated from low-carbon sources — including nuclear — has doubled between 2009 and last year, when it hit a record 50 per cent.

Yet this belies a drop in the annual investment in clean energy, which fell 10 per cent year-on-year in 2016 and another 50 per cent in 2017 — when it was at its lowest level since 2008, according to the Commons environmental audit committee.

In a report published on Wednesday, the MPs on the committee blamed the trend on a succession of Conservative-led policy decisions, including cuts to green energy subsidies.

The government has also cancelled the zero carbon homes policy that was due to begin in 2016 and scrapped a £1bn competition to set up a new “carbon capture and storage” plant to remove carbon dioxide from gas plants.